Reflecting on My Bipolar Biorhythm and Preparing for the Personal Apocolypse

You’ve heard the saying “what you resist persists” (and so have I). In the last few years I’ve been resisting bipolar disorder. I’ve been trying to permanently fix it in a handful of ways. I’m sure there are many more handfuls of ways for me to continue to resist it, but I’m going to stop, for the most part.

I don’t think in the case of Bipolar Disorder, if I stop resisting it, it won’t persist, but I will have energy to divert to other things. I’m not sure what to do with that energy as my addiction to resisting bipolar has taken up most of my life these last few years

A screenshot of the app game of Carcassonne

I wrote about how it takes up 80% of my finances, besides the necessities, and it probably takes up 80% of my life.

There was a time where I lived my life, saw my doctor and took my pills, and Bipolar Disorder only took up perhaps 20% of my life energy. I long to recreate those days. In recent months, I’ve tried to get away from the medications and I had some success followed by catastrophic failure. In picking up the pieces, I’ve been able to minimize medications. Now that my brain is back online and I have that all important executive functioning back, I need to get organized and I need to plan.

I need to organize my life to plan to fail. This sounds a little messed up but it could prevent me from messing up more than I need to.

I need to get real with the fact that I have an 8.5 month Bipolar Biorhythm. What this means is the whole complete cycle I go through from balanced to hypomania to psychosis to depression is 8.5 months. I was thinking about it today and breaking it down. It seems I spend 5 – 5.5 months in balance and hypomania which then rapidly goes into a short psychosis and 3 – 3.5 month depression. This has happened for 2 cycles. The two before that were a bit shorter.

I just started a new cycle and I’m pondering the last one. I spent much of the energy I had during the balanced and slightly manic portion resisting the medical paradigm. I managed to be medication free for 5 months and I thought this would continue indefinitely. When it didn’t, my self created transcendent paradigm was crushed into non existence overnight. It was a tough pill to swallow that I’d have to go on swallowing pills. In the 3 months of darkness, I had no capacity to think or reflect on this but now I can. So I’d better plan to break down this time instead of planning to break free. I must not resist.

I did some basic calendar math. I’m at the beginning of my period of 5ish months of wellness. So I counted out 5 months on my fingers and that takes me to June 15th, 2018. I put a reminder of apocalypse in there. I also added an additional warning one month and 2 weeks prior.

I started another nutrition and supplement program that is supportive of Bipolar Disorder on December 1st so it will be interesting to see if I get any bonus days of wellness past June 15th. It’s interesting but not imperative and I’m not going to set up my whole life narrative around the possibility of preventing the apocalypse. It’s coming, and it’s coming on June 15th.

So this time, instead of planning to catch the comet and go streaming through the galaxy, I’m planning for the apocalypse right here in my brain. Bring it on Bipolar psychosis and depression!

I will be prepared. First of all, I know when, just like a woman can track her monthly cycle, I can track my bipolar cycle. Another idea is to subscribe to Amazon Prime by then so I can order food and things that I need. It’s impossible to leave the house when I’m psychotic as I can’t drive when reality makes no sense and I’m on extra Seroquel to convert the nonsense into sleep. Another thing would be to make sure I have a therapeutic-like environment and set up my living situation to be that way. I’ve been able to get through the crisis without the hospital the last 2 times, but this time my living situation wasn’t close to ideal, which made it more painful. It’s kind of like putting that extra effort into building a bunker. It’s also important who I want to be in my bunker with me which is the same as thinking about who I like around me when I’m in crisis. The crisis will last 3 months and I don’t want anyone around me that I wouldn’t want to spend 3 months in a bunker with.

I have to remember that I don’t want to spend 80% of my time and energy preparing for the crisis in the same way that I spent 80% of my energy trying to transcend ever having a crisis again. But I do want to prepare to minimize the damage.